Former Fox News legal analyst and judge Andrew Napolitano has issued a stark accusation against U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, alleging a military operation in the Caribbean last September constituted a war crime. The warning stems from a report detailing a lethal attack on a boat suspected of drug smuggling.
Details of the Alleged War Crime
According to a damning report published by The Washington Post on Friday, Secretary Hegseth issued a verbal order to "kill everybody" on board a vessel in the Caribbean Sea. The incident reportedly occurred in September. Following an initial assault, a second strike was ordered targeting survivors who were clinging to the burning wreckage.
Napolitano, appearing on Newsmax's "National Report" this Tuesday, condemned the action in unequivocal terms. "This is an act of a war crime," he stated, adding, "ordering survivors who the law requires be rescued instead to be murdered, there's absolutely no legal basis for it." He expressed personal dismay, noting he had worked with Hegseth for seven or eight years at Fox News.
Violation of the Law of War Manual
The judge's accusation finds support in the U.S. Department of Defense's own regulations. The Pentagon's Law of War Manual explicitly states that "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal." Napolitano emphasized this point, arguing the legal breach is clear-cut.
He called for legal accountability up the chain of command. "Everybody along the line who did it, from the Secretary of Defense to the admiral to the people who actually pulled the trigger should be prosecuted for a war crime," Napolitano said, specifically highlighting the fate of "two people in the ocean clinging to a burning boat to stay alive."
Conflicting Narratives and Official Response
While critics have labeled the follow-up strike as "outright murder," Secretary Hegseth has defended the operation and blamed the order for the second attack on a Navy admiral. In a statement shared on the platform X last week, Hegseth framed the mission's objective as stopping lethal drugs, destroying narco-boats, and killing narco-terrorists.
He also vehemently denied The Washington Post's account, calling it "fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory." This sets up a direct conflict between the Secretary's version of events and the allegations presented in the media report and by legal experts like Napolitano.
Napolitano concluded that the gravity of the issue now "is getting beyond politics" and declared that "the killing is out of hand." The controversy raises serious questions about the rules of engagement and legal oversight in U.S. military operations, particularly in the ongoing interdiction of drug trafficking routes.
